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11 February, 2012

Aloneness

I don't like to be alone.

I am an extrovert. No matter how much socializing I do, there always seems to be room for more. That's true. But the type of aloneness I am talking about here is more about the "being with myself" variety. I do my best to avoid it. And I am not entirely sure why.

I wrote that first couple of sentences probably at least a year ago. And over the past year, I have oddly seen myself making a turn inward. Case in point, it's Saturday night, and I am home alone, with no plan. It's not for having tried and failed. I never had a plan. Never considered making one, except perhaps passingly, I might have considered reaching out to this or that person. But here I am, completing a blog entry from years ago, about Aloneness, in a rather ironic twist, because I know where I was going with it, and it seems to be less and less relevant to me than it ever was before.

I am not sure what it means. Am I becoming better with "being with myself," as I commented above? I don't know. Am I becoming an introvert? I don't know.

There are fragmented thoughts and connections here. I recall my mother speaking of my father. She would occasionally say to me "When your father and I first got married, we had so many friends. We would get together with them regularly. But over the years, one by one, he decided that they weren't good enough, and didn't want to be friends with them anymore."

First of all, I would not under any circumstances take my mother's assessment of my father's actions as a reflection of reality or underlying intent. I think she only observed that he became less inclined to get together with others, more okay with isolating, and she overlaid her resentment, and decided that it must have been because he felt they weren't good enough. But maybe it was something completely different? Maybe he decided that he wasn't good enough? Maybe he went through changes internally that just caused him to feel less connected with people? He's still alive. I could ask him. But I suspect that he would tell me that he doesn't recall. I should probably try to ask him.

I'm not sure any of my father's experience is necessarily relevant to mine. But I do see that I went from frantically scrambling to never not have something to do, to now being completely content to have nothing to do.

What's different with me? Have I decided that people aren't good enough? Have I decided that I am not good enough? Am I just cherishing the time alone? Am I in limbo deciding what connections I want to maintain? Am I creating space for new things that have not yet arrived?